[thelist] Award Winning Site???

[Andrew Chadwick]

On Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 03:28:01PM +0100, Paul Backhouse wrote:
> [Andrew Chadwick writes]:
> >[relax your design bit by bit throughout the process until you get
> >something that degrades nicely for the set of UAs you want to
> >support; 'cept expressed a bit blunter than that]
[...]
> 	i totally agree with you, alot of the complications i get are from our
> designers - i am solely a programmer - our designers get the time to string
> together their nice designs , the customer signs off and i get started on
> programming - unfortunately the problems start when the designer starts
> explaining how they want the navigation to work etc... i - as a base -
> program for IE 4+ and NS4+ on PC and Macs, our company feels that this the
> main area which i agree with in most aspects.

Forgive me if my tone was too sharp. Unix types tend to get a bit
tetchy when it comes to web interoperability and support, mainly
because we always seem to get the grotty end of the deal ("This shop
codes for *both* systems: Windows *and* Mac!").

I only disagreed with the point that a design that degrades nicely
across a given range of browsers must appear as drab in all UAs as it
does in the dullest UA in the set. Approximations can be made, and CSS
hacks or actual features can be employed to support (in the degrades-
but-still-usable sense, and maybe in the degrades-but-still-pretty
sense) a surprisingly wide range of browsers. They won't look the
same, of course, and maybe they won't act quite the same with all UAs,
but we should strive towards keeping them usable in the widest range
of browsers possible while keeping within the spirit and letter of the
specifications.

Of course I can quite see where you're coming from if you've had
bonehead requirements forced on your project that stop it from
evolving in the right direction.

Anyway, too much noise. Time for a tip:

<tip type="CSS, hacks, features, degrade">
Crossreference
http://pixels.pixelpark.com/~koch/hide_css_from_browsers/summary/ with
http://www.webreview.com/style/css1/charts/mastergrid.shtml and code
your CSS accordingly.
</tip>

-- 
Andrew Chadwick, UNIX/Internet Programmer, PR Newswire Europe, Oxford
--
The views or opinions above are solely mine and are not necessarily those
of PR Newswire Europe. The message may contain privileged or confidential
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use, or disclose this message. <andrew.chadwick at prnewswire.co.uk>.